


Mekakucity Stories

by asdf123150 (jadeopal)



Category: Kagerou Project, Mekakucity Actors
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Alternate version of KagePro song series, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, I don't know what else there is to say, Non-Linear Narrative, Psychological Torture, Songfic, Torture, Violence, with more songs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7404679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeopal/pseuds/asdf123150
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about family, friends, and monsters, told in a series of short vignettes. Each individual story is loosely based off a song.</p><p>Or: KagePro reimagined with different songs and a different plotline.</p><p>[The story where you reclaim what is rightfully yours: "We'll reclaim our lost paradise" -Justitia of Life (Neru)]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mekakucity Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Mekakucity Stories! A brief rundown: like KagePro itself, each short story will be attached to its own song, usually very loosely. The stories and songs are arranged in no particular order so don't be worried if you're confused about something at first, chances are it'll be sorted out in a later story. If it's not, feel free to pose a question in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer without giving you any spoilers. Part of the purpose of this series, though, is to make you guess what's going on and how things will end, so I encourage you to make as many guesses as you want.
> 
> Updating will be sporadic at best. I currently have ten chapters written and another forty or so planned (this is going to be a long trip, folks), and I can't promise I'll remember to update regularly. I'm going to aim for once every week or every other week until I run out of chapters to post.
> 
> Finally, the chapter titles are named after what I feel is the main message of each song. The lyric posted at the top of each chapter is taken from the song - either a direct translation or a translyric - and is the lyric that best captures the meaning of both the song and the chapter. At the end of each chapter I'll post the full verse/chorus, either directly translated, translyricized, or both, as well as the title of the song and the artist. Feel free to check the songs out, many of them are my favorites.
> 
> Now that that's all settled: please, relax, and enjoy the show.

_ We Will Never Part _

“Guys! Hey, guys! I’ve got something to say!”

Twelve teens turned, from various places around the room, to face the girl standing proudly in the center of the living room. She had a red muffler flung around her neck, her hands firmly upon her hips, and a sunny smile on her face.

“Come on!” she exclaimed when no one moved. “It’s important.”

Her gaze roamed around the room, searching for a victim.

Ah- _ ha _ .

She dashed forward and seized Shintaro’s arm. The boy yelped and almost dropped his cell phone, which he’d been focused on - until he’d felt someone grab his arm.

“Come on, Shintaro!” She beamed at him sunnily. “You’ll listen, won’t you?”

“Ah-ah-ah-uh-” He stuttered, flushing red, trying in vain to find something to say. She was close,  _ too _ close, for comfort. It didn’t help that he had his earbuds in and could hear a certain  _ someone _ snickering at him.

“Aww, you little tongue-tied lovebird,” a tinny voice drawled through the earbuds. “Hurry and say something, before she gives up all hope on you and  _ abandons you forever like you dream of every night _ .”

Finally, he found something to say. Not exactly what he’d been looking for, but something nonetheless.

“Shut  _ up _ , Ene!” he hissed, scarlet-faced. Ayano’s eagerness morphed into eager curiosity.

“Oh! Are you talking to Ene? What did she say to you?”

The seventeen-year-old’s head snapped back up. “N-N-N-Nothing!” Ene’s cackling in his ears didn’t do much for his stuttering, or for his cheeks’ brightness. “She was just being obnoxious as usual.”

“Ohhh.”

Shintaro cringed at the sound of that voice. Not  _ her, _ too.

Just as he feared, Ene’s real-life lookalike - a certain girl, senior to him by a year, with black hair instead of blue and a cream sweater rather than cerulean - stood up and strolled over to his side. Despite the fact that she was a good centimetre or so shorter than him, he couldn’t help but feel the size of a mouse before her fierce black stare.

“Lemme guess what Ene was telling you about,” she said - damn, even their  _ voices _ were the same lazy drawl, tinged with an undertone of thorniness - and planted her elbow on his shoulder, dropping to sit beside him on the couch. “It was...mm...about a  _ certain special someone _ that you have a liiiittle cr-”

Shintaro shot back in a harsh whisper, heart racing, desperate to stop her from saying  _ that word _ in front of  _ that red-muffler-loving girl _ , “Hey, Takane, don’t you mean a  _ certain special someone _ that you have a  _ tiny little cr- _ ”

Takane’s face went from smooth and cream to scarlet red in less than a second. She shoved Shintaro away, so hard that he went flying off the couch and slammed his head into the ground. Ayano let out a cry of surprise.

“Takane! What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” the twintailed girl grumbled, and skulked away.

Shintaro’s crash and screech of agony - and Ene’s laughter, audible even through his earbuds - had definitely attracted everyone’s attention. Shintaro would recover, Ayano reassured herself, and began her speech.

“S-So!” She winced at her slight stutter, but continued bravely on. “The Blindfold Gang has been established for almost a whole year now-”

“U-U-Um, eleven months and seventeen days,” a petite white-haired girl piped up from her position on the floor, with a cup of tea and a jigsaw puzzle laid out before her.

Ayano nodded. “Eleven months and seventeen days. And, since it seems this is as big as the group is ever going to get, I talked to my parents, and they rented an apartment for us!”

There was a long, long silence.

The one to break the silence was a blond, cat-eyed boy sporting a funny black-and-white hoodie. “Eh, Ayano, that’s not funny. April Fool’s day isn’t for another few weeks, y’know.”

Ayano flushed and opened her mouth to make a retort. Someone else beat her to it.

“Of course  _ you _ would know, Cheshire kitty,” a young, petite girl with low pigtails growled at the boy. She crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at him. “What, are you going to steal all our belongings and shove them into balloons again, like you did last year? What extravagant plan have you concocted  _ this _ time?”

He perked up. “Funny you should mention it, Hiyori! I actually-”

She spoke over him as though he wasn’t there. “Anyway, she’s telling the truth. My parents are funding this whole group, you know; they’re the ones  _ paying _ for that apartment. So, Kano, what was that about an April Fool’s day joke?”

Despite her tangible acerbity, Kano didn’t flinch. “Ahhh, Hiyori.” He chuckled. “You’re just as adorably vicious as always! Come here and give me a hug-”

There was a loud hiss from across the room, and then a fist planted itself into the top of Kano’s head.

“You’re going to make Hibiya spontaneously combust,” a low, husky, but undoubtedly feminine voice muttered behind him, and Kano looked up at his attacker, still wincing from the blow.

“Hey, Kido, when did you get here? I didn’t even notice you-”

This time the hand grabbed his ear and twisted for a brief second - only a brief second - before dropping back to her side. “Ayano’s not done talking, you know.”

“Ah, sorry, sorry.” He laughed and turned back to the brunette. “Eh? What were you saying, Ayano?”

She took a deep breath. “Well. Um - well, it’s a pretty big apartment. It’s got two floors. So, I was thinking - since most of you just hang out here all the time anyway - if you guys were interested, we could all just move in there. It’d be easier to do club activities, and...well, I just thought it would be nice if we could become more like an actual family...”

Her voice trickled away into a whisper as she mumbled a few more words inaudibly. She wrung her hands in her scarf and stared down at the floor, waiting for their response.

“ _ I _ think it’s a great idea,” Hiyori announced, tossing one silky black pigtail over her shoulder. “Maybe you guys will finally stop acting like idiots once you start spending all your time in civilized company.”

One ginger girl, who’d been fiddling with a karaoke machine, shot up and flung her hands into the air. “I’m all for it, too! It sounds fun - I’ll drag along my bro if he refuses to go,” she added with a wink. Shintaro, despite his half-year membership, was already famous in the gang for his absolute hatred of anything involving socialization.

“Hey, Leader.” An albino boy, who up till then had been lying, hidden, on the ground, suddenly sat up and peered over the back of the couch; he was so tall that, even sitting down, his eyes easily cleared the top of the sofa. “Will you make negima every day?”

Now all eyes turned to Kido, who flushed a little at the silly nickname, and mumbled, “Maybe. If we have the ingredients.”

A slow, gentle smile spread across the boy’s face. “Okay, then. I’ll come.”

Ayano beamed in relief. “Okay, then, that’s me, Hiyori, Momo, Konoha and Kido who are in - Hibiya?”

The twelve-year-old brunet fidgeted in his seat and glanced not-very-surreptitiously (although it was obviously meant to be as discreet as possible) over at Hiyori, sitting haughtily on the other side of the room. “Uh... I’ll come, I guess.”

“Don’t forget Shintaro,” Momo added, giving up on her struggle and chucking the karaoke machine against the wall. It made an unpleasant clanging noise when it hit the wall, and then again when it hit the ground. “He’s  _ coming _ .”

Shintaro winced at the threat in his sister’s voice, but didn’t respond.

Kano had been observing the going-ons with a smirk on his face. Now, seizing the opening, he spread his arms wide and singsonged, “Weeell, if Kido’s coming along and cooking every day, I don’t see why I shouldn’t come. You won’t mind, will you, Leader dear?”

She glared at him, a look that was torn between venomous and exasperated. “Do whatever you want,” she finally said, flipping her hood up and over her eyes.

Another boy, at least as tall as Konoha, if not more so, looked up and cheerily said, “It sounds like fun. I’ll come, and so will Marry - won’t you, Marry?” he asked to the girl he was lying across from.

She looked up, flustered, and squealed as she almost knocked her tea over in her panic. With long-practiced reflexes, the boy grabbed it before it could fall. “I-I-I...um... S-Sure. When are we moving?”

Ayano was counting on her fingers now. “Seto, Marry, me, Shintaro, Konoha - oh! Haruka, Takane! What about you two?”

A pale, black-haired boy, painting on an easel beside a window, smiled. “I’ll ask my parents, but I’m pretty sure they’ll agree. What about you, Takane? You’re coming, right?”

She looked at him and blushed a fiery red. “Eh? What? Moving into an apartment with you - and the others too, of course,” she added, flushing even redder. “Ah... Um, why not? I guess.”

Haruka beamed. “Great! All of us will be living together from now on!”

“Well, we’re not moving in right away,” Ayano hastily said before Momo could burst out with her packing plans, or Konoha could start barraging Kido with questions of food, or before Hiyori could begin lecturing them all about proper, civilized behaviour. “Nothing’s confirmed yet, really - and I’m not too sure where it is, and we should work out living arrangements before we move in, like where each person sleeps, and who does the laundry, and the dishes, and all that.”

“Awwww.” Kano slumped back against the couch and stretched his legs out on the ground. “Chores? We can just hire a maid or something, can’t we?” A devious grin spread across his face. “Or we can just buy maid outfits for all the girls, and-”

He received Kido’s fist in the shoulder just as Hiyori snapped, “What a sexist brute! Why don’t you go around and serve as our butler all the time, in a full suit with a stiff collar and tight tie? See how you’d like it!”

Before it could brew into a full-blown fight, Seto volunteered, “That’s a good idea, Ayano. Do you or Hiyori have any more information about the apartment? We could get started now.”

Ayano opened her mouth to respond, but Hiyori cut her off with her grumbling.

“I suppose you simpletons can’t do anything without help,” she muttered as she got up and left the room, returning scarcely a minute later with a large piece of folded paper.

“My parents aren’t home right now, but they’ve left all this information about the apartment lying around,” she commented, and threw the diagram open on the ground. Marry hurriedly brushed her jigsaw pieces aside as Seto protected the paper from the barely-scalding-anymore tea. Hiyori ignored them, smoothing out the paper folds and then sat cross-legged beside them.

“That room’s all mine.” She pointed to one of two master bedrooms - there was a total of seven bedrooms; pretty impressive for a mere apartment - in a tone that dared anyone to argue. Naturally, someone did.

“Awww.” Momo pouted. “ _ I _ wanted that one, though.”

Hiyori did a rather impressive job of trying to conceal her conflicted emotions, but not to much avail. Everyone knew that she greatly respected - in fact, nearly  _ adored _ \- the ginger singer, who posted song covers online in her spare time. It was also no small secret that some of the songs Momo sang were among her brother’s better compositions, but that was of little importance in Hiyori’s mind.

“Fine,” the pigtailed girl finally managed. “I guess we can share, or something.”

Kano leaned over the knot of bodies and gestured toward the other master bedroom. “I want that one, then! And don’t worry, I’ll share - Ayano?” His voice was meant to sound hopeful, longing, perhaps a bit lecherous; it came out trembling with a barely-suppressed laugh. “Kido? Or, I know - I’ll share it with all the girls, and start my own personal har-”

“Pervert,” Kido muttered, socking him solidly in the shoulder.

The arguments and claims and fights for space only grew more extravagant from there - and the later discussion of chores certainly didn’t do a thing to lessen the energy of the room. But, finally, several hours later, they said their goodbyes and, with the exception of Hiyori, headed back to their homes with solid plans for moving in and parents to beg for permission.

\---0---

“What do you guys think?”

Ayano stood, flushing pale pink, in the threshold of their new home. The walls were white, the rooms plain and unadorned with furniture - the hallway outside was clogged with the beds, chairs, tables, and more, that they were going to spend all weekend assembling. But the rooms were spacious enough, the bathrooms clean, the kitchen equipped with a large stainless steel fridge, microwave, oven and stoves; the stairs to the second floor - because only a two-storey apartment could fit seven bedrooms - seemed in good repair, unlikely to collapse under the rambunctious teens’ weight.

Hiyori said aloud what everyone was thinking, although perhaps a tad bit more arrogantly than anyone else would have said it:

“It’s absolutely perfect.” She stalked forward, duffel bags in hand, and took the stairs two at a time. “And if anyone wants to complain, they can leave and try to find a better one -  _ alone _ .”

Ayano heaved up her own baggage - a hefty backpack and a sizable suitcase with wheels - and lugged it forward, following Hiyori to what had been unanimously declared “the floor that the girls were all sleeping on, and Heaven help any boy who snuck up there without permission or a valid reason”.

It only took a few minutes for them all to get settled in - that is to say, to dump their baggage on their bedroom floors and settle any last-minute quarrels about room ownership. They regrouped by the entrance what felt like moments later to begin the weary task of furnishing their new home.

“It can’t be that hard,” Ayano had reasoned that fateful meeting nearly a week ago. “I mean, it’s just furniture, right?”

Hibiya had blanched and muttered under his breath, “Clearly you’ve never done this before, then.”

Nobody had listened to his mutterings. Now they were all paying the price.

“Naaails!” Kano called from the dining room. “Oi, guys, anyone got nails? The long kind? Oh - thanks, Takane! Nooow.... Just bang it in....”

Hibiya rushed over a split second before the blond boy could bring the hammer down. “No! Those aren’t nails, idiot, they’re screws!”

Kano looked up with a glimmer in his eye. “So? They’re long, they’re pointy, they’ve got flat things to hit. They’re basically the same thing.”

Hibiya ground his teeth in frustration. “ _ No _ , screws are meant to be  _ screwed in _ , hence the name.  _ Nails _ are to be  _ hammered _ in and they don’t have a hole for the screwdriver to go in,  _ or _ an actual screw around the - the pointy part! They’re entirely different.”

“Really?” Kano cast a coy look over to Shintaro, who was sorting out nails and screws into various piles with a look of absolute boredom. “Hey, Shintaro, apparently you were wrong.”

“Hmm?” Shintaro looked up and plucked an earbud out of his ear. “What?”

“There  _ is _ a difference between screws and nails. Take that, genius boy!”

“Of  _ course _ there’s a difference,” Shintaro retorted. “Nails are meant to be hammered into materials, while screws are meant to be screwed in - hence the name, ‘screw’. I suppose they might be somewhat similar since they have the same base structure, although nails probably have a longer history, since they’re much simpler to make than screws. Now, screws enter the materials to be binded by using  _ torque _ , applied by a scr-”

Momo leapt forward and clapped a sawdust-covered hand over her brother’s mouth. His eyes narrowed into splits, and he let out an explosive, muffled sneeze under the her hand. She cringed and stiffened, but forcefully kept her hand in place. “No one cares about the difference between torsion and torse.”

“Dhrzhn mnm  _ drggh. _ ”

“You never told me about that.” Kano pouted. “And I asked you if there was a difference, too.”

Now Momo released her brother, grimacing and wiping her hand on her shirt; Shintaro rubbed his nose and glared at Kano.

“You never asked me  _ anything _ .”

Kano glared right back, narrowing his eyes and giving a vicious, sharp smile. “Yeah, I did. I asked, ‘Is there a difference between this curly thing and this straight thing?’ and you didn’t say anything, and I said ‘If there’s a difference, just say so,’ and you  _ still _ didn’t say anything, which of course meant that there wasn’t a difference.”

“ _ Or _ ,” Kido cut in, grabbing the hammer from Kano and frowning at the quarreling boys, “maybe he couldn’t hear you since he’s always listening to either his music or Ene’s yammering.”

Kano raised an eyebrow at her in disbelief, then broke out laughing. “You caught me. Oh, I  _ hate _ how you always do that!”

Kido gave him a sharp rap on the shoulder. “Stop slacking off and get back to work.”

Still grinning, he turned back to the dinner table he was working on and pressed a nail beside the junction between a table leg and the tabletop. Kido, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, swung the hammer, and the nail slid halfway in.

“Watch the fingers,” Kano commented, rubbing his hands together. He’d jumped the moment she’d begun her high-velocity swing, and somehow had forced himself to hold on until she’d let the hammerhead fall. Now she hefted the hammer again and gave a grim smile.

“Next.”

\---0---

“Done,” Hiyori announced, brushing off her oversized T-shirt, grimacing at the traces of wood glue on her fingers. “That looks nice.”

It had taken longer than the prophesied single day. (They’d all scowled when Hibiya had, triumphantly, smugly, announced, “I told you so.”) When they’d realized just how difficult it actually was for amateurs to put together furniture for a seven-bedroom apartment, they decided to assemble the beds first and leave the rest of the furniture for later. They’d slept fitfully those first few nights, side by side with unfamiliar roommates, worried about snoring or sleep-mumbling or just plain old rudeness.

Then, slowly, it had gotten easier. They got used to their roommates, to their lessened privacy; the wardrobes were put up for the rooms without built-in closets, and the apartment instantly began to feel more like home.

It only took two days for them to become comfortable, with the putting-together of furniture: Wood glue. Screws versus nails. Aiming hammers properly, until the teens stopped walking around with swollen thumbs and bandaged fingers. Being able to identify the correctly sized nail or screw quickly, when in a pinch.

After the first day’s disaster, they’d thought it would take at least a week, if not two, to get everything together, but they hadn’t accounted for how quickly they’d grow accustomed to construction. In the end, it only took them six days, plus a half-night fueled by adrenaline.

They’d just finished the final piece - a flimsy, cheap coffee table of badly-stained wood - and they were getting ready to celebrate. It was three o’clock in the morning. None of them cared.

“We’ve got apple juice, Swiss roll, and ham sandwiches.” Ayano beamed and plunked a plate of the sandwiches - cut into small triangles, like the type served at tea parties - on the dining table. They’d scrounged up a couple party hats from somewhere and piled their paper plates high with pastry and not-very-dainty dainty sandwiches.

“I-I’ll go make tea,” Marry stammered, inching sideways along the wall toward the kitchen.

Momo laughed. “Don’t be so nervous! There’s no reason to act so afraid of us. I mean, we’re like a family now, aren’t we?”

“Hm?” Ayano looked up from her sandwich. A dangerous glint had lit in her eye - a glint that the entire Dan saw, and recognized, as the glint of near-suffocating affection. “We  _ are _ kind of like a family now, aren’t we?”

She put her sandwich back onto her plate and stood up. “Hey! Hey, guys! I have an announcement to make.”

“We’re all listening,” Haruka laughed, not the slightest bit muffled despite the plethora of sandwiches being stuffed into his mouth. Takane slapped his shoulder - gently - and glared until he very mournfully put down his food to listen to Ayano’s speech. Konoha, slightly guiltily, followed his example.

She took no notice of the slight distraction. “Most of us have known each other for at least a few years now, and now that we’ve moved in together, we’ve become like a real family.”

“Not really,” Shintaro muttered. “Just because we live together doesn’t m-”

His words broke off into a yelp as Momo drove her elbow into his ribs. Ayano continued. “So, let’s all make a promise now: No matter what happens, we’ll always be there for each other, and none of us will ever leave the family, no matter what the circumstances.”

“Not even death?” Hibiya - ever the sulking, pessimistic brat - muttered.

Ayano’s lips curled up in a glittering, threatening smile. “Not even death. There had best not be anyone leaving because of  _ death _ .”

Everyone automatically filled in the blank:  _ Something as petty as death had better not cross me by taking someone away. _

“Promise?”

She held up her hand by her face, pinky finger extended, and waited for the response.

Kido was the first to bring her pinky up as well. “Promise.”

Kano followed suite, smirking with a pinky on his lips.  _ Promise _ .

Then it was Hiyori, grim-faced, not to be outdone by anyone else. Then Hibiya; Seto and Marry went almost simultaneously; Momo and Takane lifted their pinkies and jerked up Shintaro’s arm, forcing him to imitate them. Then it was Konoha and Haruka, and Shintaro, very wearily, lifted up his cellphone to show Ene dancing around with a pinky thrust into the air.

“Promise!” her voice screeched from Shintaro’s earbuds. “We’ll stay together, as a family, forever and always, and we won’t let ourselves die because then we’d be abandoning the others. Promise.”

Ayano smiled, small and secretive, and lifted her scarf over her mouth. No one heard her words, soft as they were, murmured under the cover of fabric.

“ _ Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle through my eye... I’ll never leave them. _

_ “Promise.” _

\---0---

_ We dreamed a dream _

_ The two of us had dreams of our own _

_ Hooking pinkies with our special someone _

_ While both remembering from long ago _

_ For we will never separate _

_ When we both swore to never part _

_ Pinky promise _

_ From these we held in our hearts _

_ As we chanted _

_ "Pinky promise, needle through my eye" _

_ As we sighed _

-Yubikiri Genman (Project Mili)


End file.
